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PENN BIOGRAPHY CONTINUED PART II William had been engaged with another preacher in visiting Friends' meetings in the country, one of which had been broken up by a magistrate, who wrote to Sir William, telling him what tumult his son had been making, and the admiral immediately dispatched a letter ordering him to come home. The Friend, who had been traveling with him, advised him to obey his father. William decided to do so, and on his return he came to London; but, before going to Wanstead, he attended a meeting in the city. After that meeting, happening to be in the house of a Friend who resided in the neighborhood, Gulielma Maria Springett came in and was introduced to him; this was in the year 1668, and was the first time he ever saw his future wife. The manuscript account continues :-" Returning home, his father told him he had heard what work he had been making in the country, and after some discourse bid him take his clothes and be gone from his house, for he should not be there any longer. Also, that he should dispose of his estates to them that pleased him better. William gave him to understand how great a cross it was to him to disoblige his father, not because of the disposal of his estates, but “from the filial affection he bore to him." Thus father and son parted, William declaring his deep sorrow, but his still deeper conviction that he must in the first place obey God. Kissing his mother and his sister Margaret, he left the house with their cries of distress sounding in his ears. But his mother, well knowing his deep feeling and devotedness, never suffered her heart to be hardened against her son. She saw him occasionally, and supplied him with the means of procuring the necessities of life; while the Friends received him cordially in their midst as a brother beloved. His mother was secretly sending him money from time to time. Finally Lady Penn won her husband's consent to allowing William to return home; but his father treated William like a stranger and gave up trying to help a son, who, in his opinion, was such an ungrateful and stiff necked fellow. The Admiral had hoped that both he and his son could enter the nobility. Later in life, the Admiral had suffered an impeachment hearing by jealous rivals. The impeachment was dropped, and he retired to Ireland. The king, anxious to reward him, was about to raise him to the peerage under the title of Viscount Weymouth; but his son William, having become a Quaker and protesting loudly against all titles as vanities of the flesh, it seemed ridiculous to give a title that would descend to such a strange fanatic, and the king's good intentions were checked. So the admiral, through his nuisance of a son, failed to attain what was, no doubt, one of the chief objects of his life's ambition. The people of the court and town in the England of Charles II were a very dissipated and an unprincipled set. Most of the fashionable people were proud of their lack of morals, and the plays, the writings, and even the speech of the ruling class were coarse and vulgar beyond belief. William Penn saw all this, and his nature, being on a higher plane and more serious than that of his father's friends, turned instinctively to those who were living clean and respectable lives. In the jumble of new ideas and new religions he found comfort in the simplest and quietest sect; and now, having publicly declared himself a Quaker, he became one of their eminent preachers. The Quakers were glad to have a man of William Penn's education and position join their ranks. Penn himself kept his cavalier dress, and even continued for a time to wear his sword, which was a sign of a person of fashion. Early in his Quaker faith, he asked the advice of George Fox about keeping his sword, and the latter, in spite of his views, said, "I advise you to wear it as long as you can." Afterwards, meeting Penn without the sword, he said, "William, where is your sword?" "Oh," said Penn, "I have taken your advice. I wore it as long as I could."
The new minister was very useful to the religious party he had joined. Besides preaching, he wrote a number of tracts, the first of which he called Truth Exalted. In this he attacked, according to the custom of the times, all religious views that differed from his own, and answered the criticisms of other sects. He was even more useful in interceding for Quakers who had been put in prison. Having friends at court, and being still regarded as something of a courtier, he could appeal to the officers of state better than others of the new sect. His arguments in favor of setting the Quaker prisoners at liberty were listened to respectfully by the high officials, but his requests at that time were not granted. About this time he attended the death-bed of Thomas Loe. This eminent minister, we may remember, had been the messenger of good to William Penn while at Oxford; and it was by his powerful ministry that he was afterwards convinced. The following account of the last hours of his beloved and venerated friend is found in a letter of William Penn to Isaac Penington.
Two men, who belonged to the congregation of the Presbyterian preacher Thomas Vincent in London, became Quakers. Thomas Vincent was very angry and called Penn unpleasant names. So Penn and his friend George Whitehead challenged Vincent to an open debate in the latter's church. The challenge was accepted. Penn and Whitehead went to Vincent's church, which was crowded, and as they pushed their way forward Vincent denounced them in no measured words. The two Quakers joined in the wordy warfare, and began a heated religious argument, while the congregation hissed and flung at them such names as "blasphemers" and "villains." Vincent himself kept interrupting, and at length, pretending to be shocked at what the two men were saying, began to pray for them. The people blew out the candles that lit the church and tried to eject the two Quakers. The meeting ended in uproar. Not in the least daunted by the harsh and unkind criticisms that were showered on him from all sides, Penn wrote more pamphlets, criticizing the religious views of some of the older sects, and calling many of their ideas relics of the ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages. He was a clear and powerful writer and showed his satisfaction in stating in black and white the views that had led him to believe that truth was to be found in the religion of the Quakers rather than in any other creed. This was doubtless more satisfactory to him than holding noisy and hot-tempered arguments with opponents on street comers or in public halls, and won for him the reputation of being the ablest of all the early Quaker leaders. Samuel Pepys, of the famous Diary, says thus frankly of Penn's pamphlet, The Sandy Foundation Shaken, "I find it so well written that I think it is too good for him ever to have written it; and it is a serious sort of book and not fit for everybody to read."
Penn stated this in a letter to a friend, explaining the position he staked in The Sandy Foundation Shaken:
The outcry which was thus raised soon stirred up the persecuting spirit in some of the heads of the Church which he had forsaken. They were not slow in procuring an order for his imprisonment in the Tower, on an accusation of blasphemy. None of his friends except his father, who was not likely to avail himself of the permission, was allowed to visit him there. His servant, who alone had free access to him, brought him word that the Bishop of London was resolved that he should either publicly recant, or die a prisoner. To this he replied,
That "faith which overcomes the world" was now his in truth; and its sustaining power kept up his spirit in the solitude to which he was condemned. And though he could not then go forth from place to place as a preacher of righteousness, his pen could send abroad his thoughts even more widely than his voice. Conscious of this, he used indefatigably in his Lord's service the talent he could command. Beside some rejoinders to the attacks of his enemies, which he sent forth from the Tower, he there and then wrote his great work, No Cross, No Crown. As coming from the pen of so young a man, this work, on account of the intimate knowledge of ecclesiastical history and the breadth of thought which it displays, was regarded as a marvelous composition, and passed through several editions during the author's lifetime. Finding that many serious persons, who were not mere cavilers, were led by the representations put forward against him to think that he did not recognize the deity of Christ the savior, because of its not being noticed in The Sandy Foundation Shaken, he wrote Innocence with her Open Face. In this work he gave a full exposition of his convictions on that important subject. His statements indicate so much careful examination and clearness of intellect, that I think it right in this connection to quote some of them. He says :
After such a full solemn statement as this, of course no room was left for calling in question William Penn's entire belief in the divinity of the Lord Jesus. But still there remained his un-recanted declarations of the unscriptural character of the scholastic terms, and the other teaching against which he wrote in The Sandy Foundation, Shaken. From these he did not recede in the slightest degree, when writing Innocence with her Open Face. Instead of doing so, his remarks only went to confirm or reiterate his former statements. Thus he concludes :
William Penn, still continuing a prisoner without being brought to trial, despite all he had written and published, at length addressed a long letter to Lord Arlington, Secretary of State, asking him to interfere. He showed how contrary it was to every principle of justice, and every legal idea, ancient or modern, to keep a man imprisoned for holding certain opinions which he really did not hold, without allowing him an opportunity of clearing himself on open trial; and he asked, even if he did hold all the opinions objected to, by what law could he be legally imprisoned for doing so; and, if they wished to convince him of error, could they hope to effect it by such means. He says in conclusion :
This letter bears date the 1st of Fifth-month, 1669, and in little more than a month after it was written the writer was released, after about eight months' imprisonment. On the 24th of Eighth month he sailed from Bristol for Cork, where he arrived on the 26th. By his father's express orders; he was again to undertake the management of the Shangarry estate. He then began to look about to see how he could be of most service to the people who were of his own religious faith. CHAPTER V PENN HELPS HIS FRIENDS By this time no one could doubt that William Penn had courage, for it took considerable bravery to face and endure imprisonment in the Tower of London as he had done, and this show of courage won admiration even from his father the Admiral. At this time Sir William was having troubles of his own. The command of his fleet had been taken from him, and he was suffering from the gout; altogether he was not in a very pleasant frame of mind, but he softened sufficiently toward his son to ask him to go again to Ireland to look after the family property there, although the request was made through William's devoted mother, and not directly. When he wrote to his son, he showed that he still rather doubted William's filial regard, for he said, "If you are ordained to be another cross to me, God's will be done, and I shall arm myself as best I can against it." When William reached Ireland, he found the lot of the Quakers was then no better than it had been before. Their very virtues - for they were generally a hard-working and thrifty people - had set many against them. Indeed, nearly all the Quakers in Cork had been lodged in prison. Even in prison, however, they managed to carry on their affairs; for, said Penn, “they turned the jail into a meetinghouse and a workhouse, for they would not be idle anywhere." He at once set to work to help these friends of his, and drew up a statement of the charges against the imprisoned Quakers and a defense of them, and with the help of some friends took the matter to the Lord Lieutenant at Dublin, with the result that before long the Quakers in Cork were given their freedom. Encouraged by this success, he made it his business to try to free people of his religion whenever he found them in the grasp of the law. During his continuance in Ireland, he usually resided either at Dublin or Cork. His sympathy with those who were suffering on account of their religion led him often to visit those who were in prison, and to hold meetings among them. He also wrote several tracts to promote the cause of religion, one of which was "A Letter to the Young Convinced." Some idea of the spirit of this production may be formed from the following extracts:
He managed the family estate in Ireland so well that when he went back to London in 1670, his father decided to forgive his son all the trouble he had put him to, and the courtier father and the Quaker son were completely reconciled. That did not mean, however, that the son had given up any of his opinions. It happened that at about the same time the government decided that the new religion was winning too many converts, and so put into effect a law that made unlawful any meetings for religious worship other than those held by the Church of England, by the terms of which law the magistrates were allowed to fine and imprison offenders without giving them a trial by jury; it also allowed to those who gave information about such illegal meetings one third of all the fines that were imposed. Whenever the Quakers held a meeting, therefore, some enemy was sure to give notice of it, and many Friends were imprisoned and more were fined, of course to the advantage of meddling busybodies. In the year 1670 the famous Conventicle Act was passed by Parliament, which prohibited dissenters from worshipping God in their own way. It had been first suggested by some of the bishops. The chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury had previously printed a discourse against toleration, in which he asserted as a main principle that it would be less injurious to the Government to dispense with profane and loose persons than to allow a toleration to religious dissenters. " This act," says Thomas Ellwood, " broke down and overran the bounds and banks anciently set for the defense and security of Englishmen's lives, liberties and properties, namely, trials by jury, instead of directing and authorizing justices of the peace, (and that, too, privately out of sessions), to convict, fine, and by their warrants seize upon offenders against it, directly contrary to the Great Charter." [Magna Carta] It was impossible that an act like this could pass without becoming a source of new suffering to William Penn situated as he then was, first, as a minister of the Gospel, and, secondly, as a man who always dared to do what he thought to be his duty. Accordingly he was one of the earliest victims to its decrees; for, going as usual with others of his own religious society to their meeting-house in Gracechurch-street to perform divine worship, they found it guarded by a band of soldiers. Being thus hindered from entering it, they stopped for a while about the doors. Others who came up joined the former and stopped also, so that in a little time there was a considerable assembly on the spot. By this time William Penn felt himself called upon to preach ; but he had not advanced far in his discourse when he and William Mead were seized by constables, who produced warrants signed by Sir Samuel Starling, then lord mayor, for that purpose. The constables after they had seized them conveyed them to Newgate, where they were lodged, that they might be ready to take their trial at the next session of the Old Bailey. This arrest was made known next morning to Admiral Penn by the following letter :
According to Quaker custom, Penn kept his hat on before the mayor, and this so maddened that official, that he said the prisoner "should have his hat pulled off, for all he was Admiral Penn's son." Then he went on to abuse the Admiral himself, saying that he had starved the sailors of his fleet, and repeating other stories that were popular among the Admiral's enemies. He threatened to send young William to Bridewell Prison, and see that he was soundly whipped! Finally Penn was taken to a certain jail known as the Black Dog, where he was locked up with a number of other Quakers and Baptists and Independents, who had all been holding meetings in despite of the law. Penn and a man named William Mead were put on trial in the Old Bailey* early in September, 1670, charged with having preached at an unlawful meeting, thereby causing a great concourse and tumult, to the disturbance of the king's peace and the great terror of many of his subjects. The two prisoners went into court with their hats having been removed before their entrance; the the judges ordered the officers to put the hats back on the prisoners' heads, and then began to question them about their wearing hats in court. Despite the judges being responsible for their hats being on in court, they used that as an excuse to fine each man forty marks for such "contempt of court." The prisoners were not allowed lawyers to defend them, and the judges proceeded to make sport of the two Quakers, as if the trial were a form of bull-baiting. Penn said that he had broken no law, but had only been worshiping God according to his own conscience. He stood up for his rights as an Englishman, and appealed to the jury to uphold their rights as Englishmen; this so impressed the jury that in spite of all the efforts of the judges, the jury would only find him, "guilty of speaking" in Gracechurch-street, and of no crime whatever. The judges sent the jury out again and again, finally keeping them locked up for two days and nights without beds or food, but the jury was not to be browbeaten. The judges at last had to accept the verdict, "not guilty," but in revenge fined each of the prisoners forty marks and ordered them imprisoned until the fines were paid; and in addition, actually fined and sentenced the jury for bringing in what they considered a mock verdict!
Penn and Mead and the jury were then sent to Newgate, where they simply refused to buy their liberty by paying the unjust fines. Thus ended this famous trial, which was sustained by William Penn with so much ability at the age of twenty-five. A few days afterwards he wrote to Admiral Penn :
There had never been in England, up to this period, a settled and defined usage with regard to verdicts. Judges had sometimes fined inconvenient and persistent juries, and it had practically been an undetermined question how far they had a right to bring in verdicts contrary to the views of the court. This great point was now to be decided. Suit was brought by Edward Bushell and his fellow jurors against Sir Samuel Starling, the Lord Mayor, and Sir John Howell, the Recorder of London, for illegal imprisonment. The Court of Common Pleas adopted the view that the bench, though at liberty to offer suggestions to the jurymen for their consideration, may not lawfully coerce them; and confirmed the doctrine of Lord Coke, that the jury, and not the judge, were the arbiters in regard to facts; and that the province of the judge was to point out and apply the law to such facts as are found by the jury. The issue of the trial was that the prisoners were ordered to be discharged. This celebrated trial was productive of important beneficial results to the people of England. It awakened their attention to the arbitrary and oppressive proceedings of the courts under the pretended sanction of law, by which the most flagrant violations of justice were often practiced with impunity. The able and undaunted manner in which the prisoners contended for their rights and liberties, and the noble stand made by the jurors against the rude and shameless attempts of the Court to browbeat and intimidate them, opened the eyes of the people to their true interests, and the necessity of claiming their chartered privileges; and thus the trial was instrumental in establishing them on a firmer basis than they ever were before ; the freedom of juries being now asserted by a solemn judicial decision. [It was Penn's eloquent pleas to the jury as free Englishmen to never abrogate their rights, which inspired the jury to courageous resistance to the tyranny of the judicial officials of the City and court. See Trial.] The Court of Common Pleas decided that the fines were unlawful and ordered the jury set at liberty. Penn and Mead, however, had been fined for wearing their hats in court, and there is no knowing how long they might have been kept in prison if the Admiral, who was ill, had not disregarded his son's letters, and paid the fines of both Penn and Mead, when they were at once set at liberty. Penn later wrote a book about this trial and published it, which was widely read in England, and resulted in Parliament passing several laws designed to prevent such outlandish abuses of unchecked power in the courts. The recorder was investigated and lost his job. In his Journal, Fox also reports that the above abuses, and many more, the "mayor's name became a stink and the Lord cut him off." The case of the courageous jurymen, (Thomas Vere, Edward Bushell, and ten others), was reviewed on a Writ of Habeus Corpus and England's Chief Justice Vaughan delivered the opinion of the court which established The Right to Juries to give their verdicts according to their convictions or conscience. In effect, this established the legal precedent of jury nullification, which still exists in USA and English courts; although in the USA, the judge often questions potential jurors of their willingness to forego disagreement with the law, resulting in nullification; excusing any potential jurors who do, regardless of conscience. The account we have of the trial was published soon after the trial was held, with a preface and a long appendix, which discussed very fully all the questions of civil liberty involved, and had a great deal to say of Magna Carta and other sources of British freedom. Some one, signing himself S. 5., wrote an answer to it, attacking Penn's father for stealing prize-money and amassing ill-gotten riches for a conscientious fool of a son, who made such a noise in court that the judge could not charge the jury. As for the Quakers, they were a libeling, lying, discontented people, who would set the country in a flame. When the king seized their meeting-house, they broke in the doors, overpowered the constables, and kicked and spurned the officers who attempted to break up their unlawful assembly. Against this attack Penn wrote a long reply called Truth Rescued from Imposture; and, reading all these three documents together, it does not seem that the original Quaker report of the trial is at all seriously impugned. The publication of the report and the sturdy conduct of Penn and William Mead, as described in it, were unquestionably useful. It was another effort in the long struggle of Anglo-Saxon liberty; and although it is not possible to point to any specific change in criminal trials as the result of it, yet, together with the other protests, it gradually, in the course of years, educated public opinion and wrought the improvement which has now long been enjoyed in all English-speaking countries. When Penn reached home he found that his father had only a few days to live. Their meeting must have been an affecting one. The admiral had been thinking what terrible things might happen in the future to his stubborn offspring, who had such a passion for making a martyr of himself in loathsome prisons. He had accordingly sent a friend to the Duke of York to make his dying request that the duke would watch over his son and intercede with the king when necessary for his protection. Both the duke and the king sent back the kindest answers and promises, which must have greatly relieved the dying admiral; and these promises were afterwards fulfilled to the letter. The admiral could no longer quarrel with his son; natural affection had got the better of all other feelings. As he approached death, he reviewed his life and times, focusing of how he was prepared for the next life. He declaimed against the wickedness and impurity of the age and prophesied judgments upon England for the dissolute and profane lives of her gentry and nobility. He also realized his own shortcomings, and as described by William, gave this excellent fatherly advice to his eldest son and principal heir:
The admiral died on the 16th of September, 1670, and with almost his last breath said to his son,-
With this noble advice, surprising for a man of the world, the Admiral died leaving William to look after his mother and his younger brother Richard. His sister Margaret had married Antony Lowther, of Maske, in Yorkshire. CHAPTER VI PENN BECOMES A MAN OF WEALTH ADMIRAL PENN had managed to accumulate a very considerable fortune, and as a result William, the eldest son, became a rich man. His family was a prominent one, he had many influential friends, and now had plenty of money; so it was thought that he would naturally become a cavalier and gentleman of fashion. He soon made it clear, however, that he meant to retain the simple way of living adopted by the Quakers. Friends of his own age made fun of him, saying it was preposterous that a man of his means and abilities should spend his time with such dull people as those of the new religion. Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London, said to him, "I vow, Mr. Penn, I am sorry for you; you are an ingenious gentleman, all the world must allow you and do allow you that, and you have a plentiful estate. Why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?" "I confess," frankly answered Penn, "I have made it my choice to relinquish the company of those that are ingeniously wicked, to converse with those that are more honestly simple." In those days men challenged each other to arguments over their religions much as they might have challenged each other to a duel. Penn enjoyed defending the Quaker cause in public. A Baptist preacher by the name of Ives denounced Penn and the Quakers in a sermon, and Penn sent him a challenge to argue the question in public. Ives did not appear at the meeting, but his brother took his place, and, according to the rules of such arguments, had to speak first. When he had finished his argument, he, with some friends, left the hall, hoping to draw so many people away with him that few would be left to listen to his opponent. But the audience stayed to hear Penn, and he spoke so eloquently that he won the house over to his side, and cost Ives the support of many of his followers. The young Quaker was proving as convincing a speaker as he had already shown himself to be a vigorous writer. He was fast becoming a power in the new sect. He soon found a bigger man than Ives to argue with, for as he traveled through Oxfordshire preaching the Quaker cause he came to the University of Oxford, where he had been a student, and learned that the young men there who were interested in Quakerism were treated worse than ever. The Vice Chancellor of Oxford thought that the Quakers might become a dangerous political party, and was doing all in his power to abolish the new religion. Penn wrote him a letter in which, with fiery ardor, he denounced the Vice Chancellor for his persecution of Quaker students, and followed it up with other broadsides of attack on all who held similar views. He was a militant character, and when he argued before a public meeting, or wrote a letter that was to be read by his opponents, he never hesitated to express himself as strongly as he knew how. So in his letter to the Vice Chancellor he gave himself free rein. He wrote: "Shall the multiplied oppressions which you continue to heap upon innocent English people for their peaceable religious meetings pass disregarded by the eternal God? Do you think to escape his fierce wrath and dreadful vengeance for thy ungodly and illegal persecution of his poor children? I tell you, no. Better if you had never been born. Poor mushroom, will you war against the Lord, and lift up yourself in battle against the Almighty? Can you frustrate his holy purposes, and bring his determination to nothing? He has decreed to exalt himself by us, and to propagate his gospel to the ends of the earth." Fine, spirited words are these, worthy of the valiant courage of young William Penn! (The author is obviously not acquainted with religion, never considering the words might actually be spoken by the Spirit of God, through Penn). Penn returned from Oxfordshire to London, and went one day to a meeting in Wheeler Street. He started to address the meeting, but no sooner had he begun than a sergeant marched in with a file of soldiers, dragged him from the platform, and carried him off to the Tower. That evening an officer and some musketeers marched him from the Tower to Sir John Robinson, the lieutenant, who asked him many questions, trying to make it appear that Penn was a dangerous man, who, unless he were checked, might turn out to be another Cromwell. Sir John, knowing that the Quakers were opposed to all oaths, called on Penn to swear that he would never take up arms against the king, and also to take a solemn oath that he would never try to make any change of government either in church or state. This oath Penn refused to take, saying that the Quakers were opposed to all fighting as well as oath-taking. "If I cannot fight against any man (much less against the king)," said he, "what need I to take an oath not to do it? Should I swear not to do what is already against my conscience to do?" Sir John and the other judges sneered at him, told him that he was bringing an honorable name to disgrace, and treated his principles with haughty contempt. Finally Sir John said, "But you do nothing but stir up the people to sedition; and one of your friends told me that you preached sedition and meddled with the government." Penn looked these accusers squarely in the face. "We have the unhappiness to be misrepresented," he answered, "and of which I am not the least concerned. Bring me the man that will dare to justify this accusation to my face, and if I am not able to make it appear that it is both my practice and all my friends' to instill principles of peace and moderation, (and only war against spiritual wickedness, that all men may be brought to fear God and work righteousness), I shall contentedly undergo the severest punishment all your laws can expose me to. “As for the king, I make this offer, that if any living can make it appear, directly or indirectly, from the time I have been called a Quaker (since from that you call me seditious), I have contrived or acted anything injurious to his person, or the English government, I shall submit my person to your utmost cruelties, and esteem them all but a due recompense. It is hard that I, being in assent, should be reputed guilty; but the will of God be done. I accept of bad reports as well as good." But he could not make Sir John and the other judges believe in his innocence. "You will be the heading of parties and drawing people after you," said Sir John, doggedly, and ordered Penn taken to Newgate, the worst prison in London for the offence of preaching the Gospel to his brethren, and refusing to disobey the commandment of Christ. Penn replied:
In Newgate Quakers were herded with criminals of the lowest type. People with money could hire rooms for themselves at Newgate and so avoid some of the discomforts of that vile place, and Penn spoke to his jailers about having a private room, but they answered him so abusively and insultingly and charged him so much for a private room that he said he preferred to share the lot of the poorest criminals in the stinking common room. And there this man of wealth and education bravely stayed for six months, writing a number of essays and a spirited religious pamphlet. William Penn did not permit the time of his imprisonment to be lost to himself or the community; but wrote several tracts, chiefly of a religious character, which were soon afterwards given to the world. The first of these is entitled, The great case of Liberty of Conscience, once more briefly debated, and defended by the Authority of Reason, Scripture, and Antiquity." In the preface he maintained that the enacting of such laws as restrained persons from the free exercise of their consciences in matters of religion, was but "the knotting of whipcord on the part of the enactors to lash their own posterity, whom they could never promise to be conformed for ages to come to a national religion." He maintained that those who imposed fetters upon the conscience, and persecuted for conscience' sake, defeated God's work of grace, or the invisible operation of his Holy Spirit, which alone could beget faith ; that they claimed infallibility, which all good Protestants rejected ; and that they usurped the divine prerogative, assuming the judgment of the great tribunal, and thereby robbing the Almighty of a right which belonged exclusively to himself; that they overthrew the Christian religion in the very nature of it, for it was spiritual, and not of this world; in the very practice of it, for this consisted of meekness ; in the promotion of it, for it was clear that they never designed to be better themselves, and they discouraged others in their religious growth ; and in the rewards of it, for where men were religious out of fear, and this out of the fear of men, their religion was condemnation and not peace ; that they opposed the plainest testimonies of Divine writ, which concurred in condemning all force upon the conscience ; that they acted contrary to all true notions of government, first, as to the nature of it, which was justice; secondly, as to the execution of it, which was prudence ; and, thirdly, as to the end of it, which was happiness. The dissertation is closed in these words:
Another tract was, A Serious Apology for the Principles and Practices of the People called Quakers, in reply to the aspersions of Thomas Jenner and Timothy Taylor, in their book called Quakerism Anatomized. In explanation of the doctrine of Friends on the subject of immediate revelation, we take the following from this work :
On the subject of the primary rule of life, he says :
To the charge that Friends were displeased with others for observing times, days, and hours, he says:
In the sixth chapter he says :
In these employments of his pen the time of his confinement passed away, and at the expiration of the six months he was released. He had spent half of the last three years in jails. It appears that soon after, he visited Holland and some parts of Germany, in the capacity of a minister of the Gospel; but of these labors or the fruits of them we have no particular account. The reasons for his journey are unknown. Possibly, as he found he was so seriously suspected of political intentions, he may have thought it would be well to go away for a time and let the suspicions die out. Perhaps, too, his health had suffered, and he needed a change. For three years he had led a very strenuous life of controversy, preaching and writing, and half of those three years had been passed in loathsome prisons. He has left us no account of this journey, as he did of a subsequent one to the same countries; but from the few scraps of information we have about it, he seems to have been still following his great mission. There were people in those countries who were in the Seeker state of mind, disgusted with the corruption of religion which they saw around them, and already tinged with the first principles of Quakerism. Possibly, they were not at this time so numerous as they afterwards became, or Penn would have had more to say about them. At Emden, however, he found a physician named Hasbert in a receptive state of mind, and through him ten other people of the town held a silent meeting in the doctor's house. But this strange worship roused terrible suspicions, and these unfortunate converts were afterwards banished over and over again, and stripped of their property. It is not likely that Penn made many such converts on his journey, and his time was probably largely passed in investigating the religious conditions of the people in his liberal way, a study which had always strongly attracted him; but apparently he did not find much that was pleasing to him. On his return to England, in the autumn of 1771, there seems to have been a pause in the aggressive activity which had been his characteristic before his journey to Holland; and from a letter which his most recent biographer, Dr. Stoughton, has unearthed in the Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, it is probable that he was looking about for a permanent residence, with a view of marrying Guli Springett, a very pretty Quaker maiden who had captured his fancy. In spite of the ferocious religious controversy, the preaching, the jury trials, and the imprisonments, there had been a romance, a touch of human tenderness amidst the hardness of conflict and the dry spirituality of religion. It was time; for he was twenty-seven years old. Guli, or Gulielma Maria Springett, as she would perhaps prefer to be called by a writer of the world's people, was the daughter of a very gallant young Puritan officer, who at the age of only twenty-three found himself on his death-bed at the siege of Bamber. His young wife was hastening to him through difficulties and perils; and the story of her devotion and his tender farewell, as described in The Penns and the Peningtons, is doubly beautiful because it is a relief to find that there was at that time anything in England besides hard intolerance, devilish cruelty, and ribald conversation. Guli was born a few weeks after her father thus died. Her mother soon, like many others, became very unsettled in religion, and could endure neither the formal prayers of the Church of England nor the whining cant of the Puritans. While in this state of mind she met with Isaac Penington, whom she found to be also a Seeker who could find nothing in all the religions of the time but deceit They were married, and shortly discovered that the Quaker faith was what they sought; and Guli also became a Quaker. They were people of means. Penington's father had been a Puritan alderman in the civil wars, and one of the court for the trial of Charles I. They lived contentedly at Chalfont in Buckinghamshire until they suddenly became one of those families whose ruin Penn said was impoverishing and depopulating England. Penington was thrown into prison for his opinions, and his wife and Guli had to wander about as best they could until he was released. It was after their sufferings had begun that Penn first knew them. Thomas Ellwood, Milton's friend, lived with them, and he has left us a quaint and serious description of Guli as “in all respects a very desirable woman, whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to render her completely comely, or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way extraordinary." A fair fortune would go with her, an accompaniment which lovers do not usually refuse. She had, indeed, many suitors of all ranks and conditions; but, as the excellent Ellwood tells us, she bore herself "with so much evenness of temper, such courteous freedom, guarded with the strictest modesty, that none were unduly encouraged, nor could any complain of offence." A very tantalizing young woman she certainly was, and it seems that Ellwood himself was a little touched. Being the child of parents who could love with devotion, Guli herself was no doubt a strenuous heroic little soul. Penn could attract her, for she could see in him a Quaker hero who feared not the face of man. Unfortunately the children she bore were not what we should expect from either Penn or her. Heredity often plays queer tricks just at the time when you look for a sure result. Penn's heirs who became the owners of the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania were the children of his second wife, a less lovely woman than Guli; and to this day there are Pennsylvanians who regret that they could not be ruled in colonial times by Guli's sons. But all that came afterwards. Let us be content that now in the spring of 1672 Penn and Guli were married and settled down at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, far from the dirt and turmoil of London, with its terrible Tower and foul Newgate. They were rich and could live at ease, and they seem to have been very happy lovers as long as Guli lived. The terrors of persecution had for a time passed away. Charles II had issued a sort of document always detested by the sturdy Anglo-Saxons even when it relieved them from suffering. He called it a Declaration of Indulgence, and in it he arrogantly announced that by virtue of his supreme authority he dispensed with, or, in plain English, abrogated and annulled, for the time being, all the penal laws against Quakers, Presbyterians, Romanists, and other dissenters from the Church of England. Although he outwardly conformed to the Church of England, Charles was at heart and in secret a Romanist, and his brother, the Duke of York, was now openly one. Charles had, two years before, signed a secret treaty with Louis XIV of France, by which he agreed to make public his profession of the Roman faith, to assist Louis in destroying the power of Holland, and to support the claims of the House of Bourbon to the Spanish throne. In return for this Louis had agreed to supply Charles with money and to help him with an army to suppress any insurrection that might arise among his subjects. In other words, Charles, like his predecessors, wished to make himself independent of Parliament. He wished, if possible, to govern without Parliament, and this base treaty with France was to help him to attain that end. The Declaration of Indulgence was also calculated for the same end. It, of course, relieved the Roman Catholics as well as the Quakers and Puritans from the penal laws, and thus assisted the king's secret Catholic friends and gratified the Catholic king of France. But it performed also the more important function of creating a precedent for ruling without Parliament. It relieved the people from very oppressive laws; and they could hardly refuse its benefit; and that put them at once in the position of assenting to the king's power to abrogate and annul laws as he pleased. In a few years this became a very momentous question and one with which Penn was closely concerned. But at present, while he was enjoying his first year of married happiness, he had nothing to say about the Declaration of Indulgence. He was probably glad enough to see the hapless Quakers come trooping out of the dismal prisons. Nearly five hundred of them came out into the light of day and were restored to their families. In view of that benefit Penn and others were willing to overlook for the time the king's attempt to rule solely by his own will. Most of the spring of the year of 1672 Penn seems to have spent in the enjoyment of his honeymoon. In the summer he again resumed his preacher's life - that is, the life of a Quaker preacher, who serves without pay, is under no orders or compulsion from men, (only the Lord), and may have some other occupation to support himself. During his preaching of this summer he traveled through the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, working hard; for within three weeks he and his companion are said to have attended twenty-one meetings, and were much gratified at the increasing numbers and earnestness of their people. He summarizes his efforts in the following manner:
The traditions of Penn which Clarkson collected among the Quakers in England describe him as a very hard-working minister. He worked hard, in fact, at all his undertakings. Though a learned man, he preached, it is said, in very simple language, easy to be understood. He was not eloquent, because under the peculiar restrictions against vanity and excitement which the Quakers place on preaching, as on all their actions, eloquence in the usual meaning of the word is unknown among them.
These same traditions describe him as very neat though plain in his dress. He usually walked with a cane, and in later life, when dictating to an secretary, as was frequently his practice, he would take the cane in his hand, and, walking up and down the room, would mark by striking it against the floor the emphasis on points which he wished particularly to be noticed. Everything, now that he was happily married, was peaceful. His days of imprisonment seemed to be ended. He had served through them as an apprenticeship to his calling; he had borne himself in them in a way which gave him a standing and influence; and he was now in a position to accomplish some really valuable results. In the following year, 1673, he and his wife traveled in the western part of England, and at Bristol welcomed George Fox on his return from America. It must have been a delightful meeting for the accomplished, learned Penn and his pretty wife. Fox was so unlike them in his education and associations, and yet so full of force, intelligence, and fire, that he must have been perpetually interesting. In his rugged, eloquent way he was full of the enthusiasm of his travels, the adventures and perils of the wilderness, the strange things he had seen, the zeal and steadfastness of the American Quakers, and the great increase and strengthening he now found among those in England. He and the Penns attended the meetings at Bristol and its neighborhood, and Fox describes these meetings as "glorious and powerful." The Quakers were, indeed, at this time reaping large rewards for their courageous and steady endurance through many years. In our time the religion that draws numbers to itself most effectually is apt to be the one that promises a little social eminence, that seems to be in the line of fashion and good society, but the Quaker faith was becoming popular because it seemed to arm its followers with fortitude. If it could give such contentment and satisfaction in the midst of suffering, it must, men thought be true. So many, we are told, from the Presbyterians and other Puritans began to turn towards the Quaker belief that the ministers of those sects bestirred themselves to call back their wandering sheep and to keep others from straying, They wrote pamphlets; and the cleverest of them was called A Dialogue between a Christian and a Quaker, in which it was assumed that the Quaker was not a Christian at all, and he was made to maintain very ridiculous principles, which were easily confuted. The life of Penn prefixed to the old edition of his works calls this pamphlet a forgery, because it was put forth as a real discourse which actually happened, and many people believed it to be real. Its author was a Baptist minister, Thomas Hicks, and Penn, to counteract his influence, wrote The Christian Quaker, a very dull performance as it seems now, but possibly of value in its time. At any rate Hicks continued his attacks and brought out a second part of his dialogue, and then a third part. Penn trying to keep pace with him by issuing Reason against Railing and The Counterfeit Christian Detected. The Quakers called on Hicks's congregation for a public debate and a chance to clear themselves. The congregation got the advantage by jockeying, for they forced on the meeting at a time when Penn and Whitehead could not be present, and the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of Hicks. Penn and Whitehead protested and demanded another meeting, which was finally obtained, and is said to have been attended by six thousand people. In the tumultuous state of religious opinion at that time there was an intense desire to hear these scholastic and metaphysical debates. The principal Quaker leaders and the principal Baptist leaders were present, and there was one of those extraordinary religious debates which occurred. The debate lasted the entire day without a decision reached, but they enjoyed the debate; both sides felt better, and had no more to say to one another. Penn had to answer some author who wrote The Spirit of the Quakers Tried; he had to attend to the case of a pair of pretenders, Reeve and Muggleton, who with their “fond imaginations" drew away much people after them; he had to down John Faldo, who wrote a Curb to W. Penn's Confidence; and Harry Hailywell had to be looked after because he wrote An Account of Familism as it is Revised and Propagated by the Quakers. But Faldo was soon on his feet again, and procured the signatures and approval of “one-and-twenty learned divines"* to his book Quakerism no Christianity, and Samuel Grevil assailed the inward light, and John Perrot, who had attained some distinction among the Quakers, turned renegade and attacked his own people in The Spirit of the Hat and in Tyranny and Hypocrisy Detected. These things and long letters of rebuke to magistrates and of encouragement to the faithful in the Netherlands and in Maryland kept Penn busy enough for two years while he lived in his pleasant country home at Rickmansworth, and learned what a charming woman his young wife was.
By this time the Quakers had gained so many converts that the other sects were beginning to be afraid of them, and continually challenged them to more and more of those strange public debates in which the speakers did not hesitate to call their opponents harsh names. It was said of Penn that "he never turned his back in the day of battle," and he apparently threw himself into these arguments with the same ardor his ancestors had shown in warfare. Besides taking up the cudgel in defense of the new creed, he wrote many pamphlets and letters to people who disapproved of the Quakers. In this way he kept himself very busy during the two years he lived at his charming country home. PERSECUTION, OATHS, AND CONTROVERSY The declaration of indulgence to those who dissented from the established church, which was issued by the king in 1671, was not long permitted to pass unopposed. From the character of the reigning monarch, and the measures of the court, it was inferred that this act of indulgence was not designed for the relief of Protestant dissenters, so much as the protection of Roman Catholics; and, at all events, it was obviously an assumption of power under the character of the royal prerogative, which excited the jealousy even of those who would have gladly obtained the same indulgence in a constitutional way. The Parliament which met in 1673 complained of this suspension of the penal laws by the dispensing power of the crown, as one of the grievances to be redressed; and having the power of granting or withholding supplies, they used it in this case, so that their prodigal and needy monarch revoked his proclamation and broke the seals with his own hands. Though the Parliament was then composed of men rather more favorable to toleration than in the early part of Charles II 's reign, yet, when the declaration of indulgence was revoked, no effectual measures were adopted to secure a legal toleration, and therefore the persecuting bigots of the day availed themselves of that revocation to revive the Conventicle Act, and to renew the oppression of conscientious dissenters. These unrighteous proceedings soon attracted the attention of our author, and furnished employment for his pen through a considerable part of the year 1674. Some justices of the peace in Middlesex having used an unexpected degree of harshness towards Friends who had assembled at a meeting in their neighborhood, at which, it appears, he was present, he addressed a respectful letter to them, forcibly appealing to their own understandings against the persecuting measures to which they had given countenance. In that letter he assumed the ground that the king's declaration of indulgence was revoked, not because there was any objection to its principles, but on account of the authority of the grant. He further urged that the kingdom was then undisturbed, that there was consequently no just cause for the execution of such laws, and that when the reason of a law had ceased, the law itself became obsolete without a formal repeal; and that it was very questionable whether the law by which Protestants were burnt for their opposition to the church of Rome had ever been repealed. Laws, he observed, were either fundamental, and therefore permanent, or enacted upon particular emergencies, and to expire of themselves when the cause of their enactment had passed away. Penn wrote:
George Fox had been one of the first to suffer almost immediately after his return from America. They had caught him in the trap in which they caught so many. They required him the oath of allegiance, and when he refused it because he could take no oaths of any kind, they imprisoned him without trial as a seditious and dangerous person, an enemy to the government. He was in jail for over a year on this occasion, suffering severely at times from illness, with his wife rushing about the country to procure influence for his release and returning to the prison to nurse him. The king offered him a pardon; but the Quakers were always obliged to refuse pardons, because their acceptance would imply that they admitted that they had done wrong; and, indeed, the pardons were usually intended to force such an admission. Penn and the leading Quakers exerted themselves to obtain Fox's release, and Penn went to court, where he had not been for five years. He appealed to his old friend and his father's friend, the Duke of York, and the interview is significant because of the duke's rather fulsome language in favor of liberty of conscience and Penn's relations with him on this subject in after years.
The following letter to George Fox was written soon after the interview above related :
George Fox having been brought by a writ of habeas corpus before the Court of the King's Bench, Sir Matthew Hale discharged him by proclamation. Penn believed that this Roman Catholic duke was entirely sincere in his professions about liberty. Afterwards, when the duke became king, as James II, Penn retained the same confidence. He could never forget the many kindnesses the duke had shown him, and gratitude it instilled a deep loyalty in Penn. In continuing his account of the interview, he says, "That it should be grateful to me was no wonder; and perhaps, that with some was the beginning of my faults at court." It was about this time that Penn wrote his Treatise of Oaths. It was an important little book for his sect, because their objection to oaths was causing them much difficulty and countless imprisonments. The book was carefully prepared in Penn's most learned manner, and was in effect issued by the Quakers as a body; for twelve of their principal men signed the preface, which was addressed "To the King and Great Council of England assembled in Parliament." The argument would not now carry much weight; but as minds were then constituted it was not without influence. His strongest points were the passages in the New Testament in which Jesus says, "But I say unto you, swear not at all," and James says, Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned. He goes on to argue that it is presumptuous and irreverent to summon God as a witness on every occasion; that it is inconsistent with Christianity, which removes in man the treacherous lying which first led to oaths; that it is no safeguard against perjury, since oaths have become so common that they have lost any awe-inspiring influence they may have had; that the form of oath is a superstitious ceremony of kissing a book.
The most interesting part of the treatise is the learning it displays. Beginning with the Persians and Scythians, he goes on quoting scores of writers, Greek and Roman, fathers of the church, in every age of history, and succeeds most effectually in showing that a large number of the great and good men of the past, especially among the early Christians, had the same objections to oath-taking as the Quakers. A few quotations taken at random will show his method.
Ponderous oaths, these ancient sages reasoned, were unnecessary, because in the end you judged of the truth by comparison of circumstances and likelihood. The Quakers were unable to abolish oaths; but they succeeded in greatly modifying their usage. As time went on statutes were passed allowing Quakers,* or anyone who wished it, to give his simple affirmation instead of an oath. These statutes prevail now in most English-speaking countries, and thousands who are not Quakers avail themselves of the privilege either because, like the ancient sages and fathers, they think an oath absurd, or because they wish to avoid disobeying the specific commands of Jesus and the Apostle James.
As a collection of all the ancient wisdom on this question, and as contributing, no doubt, in shaping human conduct, this treatise by Penn is one of the most interesting of his writings. But this work, however it might have softened some, had not the least influence, (such was the religious fury of the times), where it was most to be desired. Bigots who had power, still continued to abuse it. Persons were thrown into jail, so that parents and their children were separated. Cattle were driven away. The widow's cow was not even spared. Barns full of corn were seized which was threshed out and sold. Household goods were seized for court security, so that even a stool was not left in some cases to sit on. These enormities sometimes took place on suspicion only that persons had preached to or attended an illegal meeting; and to such length were they carried, that even some of those who went only to visit and sit by their sick relations, were adjudged to be a company met to pray in defiance of the law. William Penn attempted again to stem the torrent by a work of another kind. He published a treatise under the following title : England's present interest considered with honor to the Prince and safety to the people, in answer to this question: What is most fit, easy, and safe at this juncture of affairs to be done for quieting differences, allaying the heat of contrary interests, and making them subservient to the interest of the government, and consistent with the prosperity of the kingdom? Submitted to the consideration of our superiors." He answers his question by asserting that the thing most fit, safe, and easy to be done, would be a determination by the Government, first, upon an inviolable and impartial maintenance of English rights; secondly, upon conducting itself so as to act upon a balance, as nearly as it could, towards the several religious interests; and, thirdly, upon a sincere promotion of general and practical religion. "Englishmen," he said, "had birthrights. The first of these consisted of an ownership and undisturbed possession, so that what they had was rightly their own and nobody's else, and such possession and ownership related both to title and security of estate, and liberty of person from the violence of arbitrary power. This was the situation of our ancestors in ancient British times. They who governed afterwards, the Saxons, made no alteration in this law, but confirmed it. The Normans who came next did the same. William, at his coronation, made a solemn covenant to maintain the good, approved, and ancient laws of the kingdom, and to inhibit all spoil and unjust judgment. The same covenant was adopted by his successors, and confirmed by Magna Carta. The second birthright of Englishmen consisted in the voting of every law that was made, whereby that ownership |
